Posts by goldcd
94 posts • joined Monday 12th July 2010 16:14 GMT
I'm always suspicious
Just means one load of lobbyists outpaid the other group this time.
Well
That's my Christmas wish list taken care of.
Also
-ise versus -ize
I'd always assumed that 'ise' was 'correct' and 'ize' was just something the yanks had made up to annoy us.
Seemingly not that simple and the switch from "ize" to "ise" enforced (rather than being seen as a preference to argue over between Oxford and Cambridge) by the EU definition of English..
Yep
Whilst the land of the free normally seems to get the non-shitty end of the stick in most situations, their phone system/charges are just 'weird'
I was always a little confused when say Samsung announced a new handset for $500 say, I'd see these weird comments that they would never consider buying any phone over $99. Finally twigged that they hadn't actually considered the phone/contract could be separated (although in a world of non-GSM, that's probably not too far off).
GSM really is a quite marvellous thing and a lovely example of why vertical integration/walled-gardens DON'T benefit the end user.
Just wanted to say - I really enjoyed that article
Any change of having a tag/category that stuff like this can be grouped in?
Occasionally stumble across these longer articles, and enjoy them - just suspect I've missed the majority which are hidden in the archives amongst the press-releases etc.
Oh don't be hard on them
God knows I work for a company positively saturated with retarded-suits forever scrambling over the exhausted corpses of the able, to claim the glory.
Doesn't mean there isn't some lovely stuff - hate the suit, love the tech.
Damn it
I hate it when somebody has already written my post for me.
I was think along the same lines
I've got a pretty nondescript Omega I've worn every day for the last ooh ~ decade. Steel bracelet has a nice 'patina' from the casual abuse I've subjected it to, but the glass (which is nicely convex and proud on top) is still absolutely flawless.
Always wondered why phones didn't just use the same stuff - and now understand - and can't wait until they do.
Well I hope you paid for it (as I never did)
http://thanksfortrumpetwinsock.com/
Re: Mostly on Maps
Hmm.
If Apple wish to kick Google maps, and replace it with their own - then I'm guessing they're about a billion behind on their R&D budget already.
I'd completely missed their pricing
The reason (and now only half my reason) is the fact that I (and I assume others) simply don't 'need' 4G. Sure it would be nice if everything downloaded faster, but just 'nice'.
Home and offices are covered by free wifi. Airports and hotels seem to be covered by my corporate iPass account (and this saves a wedge in roaming charges).
Aside from the odd web-page or mail, the only times I really use mobile data is for using Google Navigation as I drive or streaming Spotify as I walk - and 3G does fine.
4G does provide the consumer with a high speed connection, but the 'big' changes are on the operator side - and these should simplify the back-haul (and therefore reduce costs). Bullet point change would be that everything you do on your handset, no longer has to be hauled all the way back across their access network and back out again. You want the internet, they can just plug that directly into the mast. You want to send a file to the guy next to you, your phone, to the mast, to the other phone.
I seem to have meandered from my point slightly, but I can guarantee that LTE isn't going to take off whilst it's more expensive than existing 3G.
Mixed bag, isn't it
I've tried to find info sometimes and just kept going around in somewhat pointless loops (or get thrown into some horribly complex document, I realize 10 mins later is completely inappropriate).
However, some of it is just 'lovely' - car tax. I don't like paying it, but does what it says on the tin with minimal fuss.
Ages back I decided to get a proper photo-card driving license (as my old paper one was in pieces and covered in sellotape). The pile of paper forms and booklets I had spent 2 years sat on my shelf as I couldn't quite bring myself to wade into it.
Then I randomly tried the site - and found out I just have to fill in a single form and hand over cash, and nice new card arrived a few days later (with the photo just pulled from my passport).
As I can see some people say - it's not perfect - but there's definitely hope and whatever was spent was entirely wasted (say like every other government IT project).
Re: You can get the bible in klingon for kindle
Click - "Language:English"
Posted in The ten SEXIEST computers of ALL TIME
Re: Wot no SGI?
I was flicking through looking for SGI stuff - no O2?
So pretty and all modular.
Amen
Although I blame Steam sales for the piles of great games I have in my library, which I've never even got around to loading.
Currently I think my plan is to spend the first decade of my retirement working through the backlog.
Also handy for places that don't like Amex
oh, and saves me the bother of having to type in my address... yes, I do realize that I have become incredibly lazy..
We don't need more/cheaper tablets.
I've always paid for top-end phones and laptops, but didn't think I had a place in my life for a tablet.
Start of this year I bought a "£100 android tablet". God I hated that thing. It wasn't 'bad' just every bit of the experience was mildly viler that I wanted. I certainly wasn't going to cough for a 'premium' £500 tablet - but I just lost the will to live when I tried to use that tablet.
Then I got a Nexus7 as a final punt. It's pretty-near perfect - and cheap. Yes there's the Nexus10, S-Pads and the iPad if you want to spend a noticeable chunk of money - but I just can't imagine anybody so price sensitive they'd sacrifice any N7 features to save a few quid.
The gap for 'ultra-low-price' items surely isn't in the world of tablet, it's in the items most people don't know they need yet that's currently filled by dedicated appliances, that would benefit from a bit of underlying Android (or your SSO, IP enabled, OS of choice).
I want the DAB clock radio - with an OS - I can listen to spotify or my Google Reader subscribed Podcasts - I don't want a dock for my phone, I want to not have to put my phone into my clock radio.
I want my STB to maybe flash up a message when I get an email or a txt on my phone and allow me to use my phone as an output screen.
I want a magnetic e-ink screen on my fridge with my calendar for the day, that only needs charging twice a year.
I want a DECT phone, that relays unanswered calls to my house to my mobile over IP (or allowed me to connect from my mobile to my home phone etc).
I guess my point would be that all the underlying gubbins we currently have in tablets is getting ridiculously cheap - but just making every cheaper tablets is quite frankly boring and unnecessary.
Hmm
I was a happy gold user for years. Bluntly I liked the experience and didn't notice the cost.
I mean I was aware PSN was free - but then I was also aware of the eternal mess it seemed to be.
Few things made me change my mind - the pointless MS bonus points trying to make it appear 'good value', PSN introducing their own paid subscription which actually seemed to offer something new, but most importantly their last batch of f'in dashboard updates that turned 'my' console into a f'in advertising hoarding at the expense of usability.
Basically if something's free, I'll put up with adverts - google is a fine example. I get free stuff and I accept they need to get something infront of me that covers their costs. Alternatively I'm happy to pay for something, if it's geared around making life as perfect as possible for me - e.g. the updates for parties, beacons etc - I used to look forward to each update as it used to bring 'cool shit'
Xbox just seems to have lost their soul/way. Maybe it's just me, or maybe it's just that Xbox is no longer just a fun little MS side-project that they hoped would cover their costs one day.
Anyway - I've let my gold subscription lapse, most of my games have been donated to the office pile, and I'm back on Steam. Can't see myself going back to consoles - my next 'console' will be a second PC plugged to the TV.
Re: Bias and xenophobia? In the blogs of El-Reg? Heaven forfend!
*nods*
Although that does give you the opportunity to point out that in Korea they like to keep companies under family control, rather than the governing of the entire country.
Oh I agree
But I'm not at all convinced that iOS is 'cool' (and nor for that matter is an old version of Android running on some generic-underpowered PoS hardware).
I for one am hoping utilitarian makes a come-back. Those decade old Nokias 6310s we still have lurking in the corners of the office, the ones that have unbeatable sound-quality, never broke and have a battery that lasts a week. I don't want one, but they have a special place in my heart.
Even the users of iphones don't really seem to feel any attachment to theirs - every couple of years they'll wave around the new one they upgraded to, so an increasingly dimming sound of adulation. I mean this year "Oh, is that the new one?". "Oh, that's nice, it's widescreen finally, I see"
I ooohed much more over the Lumia casing and the stylus on a Note.
Looking at the BBX interface, the two apps on the same screen thing - that deserves an oooh.
Just can't help but think once the mystique has gone from iphone, it'll have lost something. Does anybody really ooh over somebody pulling out an iphone as their corporate phone? You'd consider that a benefit in helping you decide whether to switch to another employer?
Probably just reiterating what's already been mentioned, but here goes
1) Don't upload from your phone.
2) Google Play music manager allows upload from your home PC and you can leave it running to auto-add anything you add there (e.g. add to iTunes) up to the cloud.
3) You don't have to stream ALL your music to your phone. You can 'pin' what you want store/cache locally on your phone (similar to how you can with Spotify) - and just do this over wifi.
4) For me it's not a replacement for spotify - but it's replaced my old music player and ever having to drag files on and off my phone.
Re: Wonder how much that price hike brought in?
Indeed.
If I were in Apple's position, and had a choice of vendor for ooooh say the memory, screens and processors I needed to make my products - I might have selected alternates before I sued..
Bluntly, if the two companies just severed all-ties, Samsung takes a hit on the balance sheet, Apple loses the ability to ship product.
ditto
Tried to claim through Asus, but serial wasn't recognized (I now realize it was probably excluding those who bought direct).
Still - I've had it since launch, and it's been an absolute gem of a device. If it'd launched today, I'd still buy it at the same price and be chuffed with it.
Same problem here
I'm looking at my asus made tablet, typing in the serial number, and it keeps rejecting it (with a REALLY patronizing message to check I can tell the difference between a 0/O and l/1 etc..)
Posted in WTF is... RF-MEMS?
I think the problem
was that traditional radios were known and "good enough". Those of us that aren't youf, will remember GSM with it's single bands, then dual, then tri, then quad...These were selling points, I could lookup countries I was visiting and work out whether by buying a new phone I could roam there. Now - I have no idea how many bands my last few phones supported - the things just 'work' and it was no longer an issue.
With LTE coming and it's massive range of frequencies that are used over the world, we're suddenly back to ye-olde issue of "my phone's not going to work there". Plus manufacturers are having to churn out different models. Having a way of 'making this problem go away' is a definite thing I might look for when I make the LTE switch.
I suspect
it's because these are only phase 1 trials.
Trying to convince your ethics board to allow you to inject HIV (although it's like totally dead we swear) into people, possibly wouldn't go down too well.
If all you want to do is check there's an anti-body response, then those already infected are less at a risk of adverse side-effects (not as if there's a chance you'll "give them HIV").
Plus there's the HIV/AIDS things - you contract the virus HIV and you're fine at first. There's then the ongoing battle in your body between the virus trying to replicate and ultimately 'win' giving you AIDS (OK, it's not a win, it's a slightly stupid virus that kills its host) and your body trying to resist. it. Current treatment for HIV sufferers isn't a cure, it's an bundle of 'stuff' designed to assist your body/slow the HIV to help your immune system on the winning side of the fight. Having additional antibodies, may help with this.
Posted in Ten... Apple iPad Mini alternatives
Nexus7 can support USB on the go
OK, you have to root it and install Stick Mount (or similar), but as with previous Nexus(es?) rooting is a nice simple task (Google Nexus Root Toolkit and you can even do it with a GUI).
Still - would have been nicer if they'd just included that OOB and included an SD slot.
Apple are still selling the 4, the 4S and the 5 (and then 3 different memory sizes for the 5).
Sure, Samsung have 'more' phones, but the Apple range above covers £319->£699 - so I'd definitely say they have a range of phones and there's a pretty large overlap in prices between Samsung and Apple Smart phones.
i.e. They're both fighting over the same section of the market (with Samsung also covering the cheaper end, Apple's ignoring for now).
I like both brands.
Although I think Dyson stopped making their washing machines due to 'issues'
All my kitchen stuff is Bosch - mainly as I noticed it never broke, so as each other brand died, a Bosch item appeared in its place.
I've got a very old Dyson DC07 that's still going strong after... well I've no idea, but can't be too far off 10.
I've happily replaced the odd hose here and there as they wore out. Motor finally packed in a couple of years ago, and I think I paid Dyson to come round and fix it - was only £20 more than the motor alone on ebay and looked a bit more of a job.
Not only did they fix my motor, I got new replacement parts from the engineer for anything that looked 'worn' - including a new cylinder that they posted out as he didn't have one with him. One of those quite mind-bloggling bits of customer care that has ensured I'll bang on about how much I love Dyson at pretty much any opportunity
Not just me then...
Now I'm never not normally one to think focus groups are a good idea, but ffs..
Dear manufacturers. There are plenty of people looking to spend our money and there's a decent sub-section willing to pay for a retina-esque, non-shiny, quality display.
Ditto for 1080 desktop monitors - If I wanted a TV, I'd have bought one.
WTF?
"The deal caused some head-scratching from observers"...
...yeah, as a company handling the job-market couldn't possibly find a way to see the benefit of a db containing a lot of people ranked informative a lot of the time etc.
Hmm
by some of the other posts, you could argue that "Am-Dram" is killing stage performance!
How are established professionals, looking to push the boundaries of their medium, expected to survive when they're competing with those that do it for nothing?
I also take slight offence at the term "musician" - surely there are many musicians that play music because they enjoy it. Making it your source of income, is your choice.
To take an example, Andrew is paid to write this article, as the market has ultimately decided it's worth the expense. We, fellow repliers, are not paid to contribute as nobody really cares what I/we type.
Now whether the good kickstarting lady's concert will be equivalent to the Reg sacking Andrew and asking me to bang out some articles for nawt... well we'll see.
Posted in Ten USB 3.0 HDD enclosures
Definitely the Zalman that can mount ISOs
I bought the e-sata version+USB2 version, mainly on a "OOh, that might be useful whim"
Found the thing to be invaluable and have assembled quite a handy collection of useful ISOs - best thing is that it is recognized as both an optical drive and a HD simultaneously. So you can for example Boot into Linux off a Live-CD and then use the HD for storage. Or boot Ghostzilla, and use it as the storage for the image. Or... etc etc.
Just one of those fantastic innovations that for very little extra, no real size increase etc becomes an essential item in your laptop bag.
Posted in Facebook shares hit all-time low
Indeed
But should FB vanish one day, I'm reasonably sure somebody else would spring up offering exactly the same thing (or even G+, which I think is maybe technically better, but just suffers as everybody else is still using FB).
Contrast this with Google vanishing from the face of the planet one day, and I'd be utterly stuffed.
as was google
as I assume they were helping to direct people to his site, whilst displaying adverts. As were the ISPs who sold all the subscribers the high bandwidth connections they needed. As were the hardware vendors who sold the ISPs the kit they needed to support all those naughty downloaders, etc etc.
The problem, is that they wouldn't make any more money.
There are plenty of SIM only deals (have a look on Quidco) and similar that'll give you whatever you got with your splangly new smartphone, for way under a tenner a month.
Spread the extra paid for your contract over 2 years, and it pretty much comes to the retail price of your phone. My point being that over 2 years it doesn't really make much difference if you buy the phone bundled with the contract or not.
The benefit of the contract the operators have now, is that they can tie you in. You pay for the 2 years, you may forget the contract is up and keep paying your £35 a month (free operator money). You may just ask for an upgrade, get it, and lock yourself in for another 2 years (cheaper than finding a replacement customer for them) - oh and this new phone might have some spanglier service they can bill you additionally for.
In a world of PAC and SIM only deals, removing phones from bundles is going to cause utter carnage to their customer base.
Connected to the possible movement to Linux?
Should they roll their own Linux (or associate with an existing vendor), then there are going to be an awful lot of people switching.
An awful lot of people who haven't really used Linux.
An awful lot of people who are going to be eternally looking for that thingie they used to have in windows that did whassit and has now vanished.
Thank god
No more hunting around online re-sellers, who seem to work entirely based upon commission (and therefore the list price on the actual vendor website is ridiculous so as not to incur the reseller-wrath.
Quite interested to see if they take this further than just x for y.
App world seems to love randomly versioning the software, to throw you into an abyss of upgrade-path wrath. Could maybe now have the option of having the latest version for x years? Lifetime subscription? Best-of-breed bundles of apps? Spend $50 a year on Steam and get free AV updates.
I do like that last one a lot - All windows people need it, the actual cost would be microscopic, keeps Steam sticky (especially before the others all start copying them), vendor gets to brag how it's the largest AV out there, guaranteed income, users aren't going to be the people that cost the AV company anything (think your Gran phoning them to ask if she's got a virus, because she saw a rude picture somewhere) etc.
Hmm
I personally believe Steve Auckland is a 'dick'
I have never heard of him before this entire story broke, I still have no real idea who he is, and all I can conclude by the dropping of this action is:
1) He may be less of a dick that I originally thought.
2) Somebody (likely to be whoever's paying the lawyers) told him - "Stop being a dick".
Actually, reflecting upon the issue, I suspect option 2 is the most likely. The whole screaming that the imposter must have hacked the DM to get info, seemed to be missing the blindly obvious. My money on USD is one of the many people forced to share a working life with him, who just needed somewhere to vent. The hacking accusation therefore smacks of an ego so large it couldn't possibly accept that somebody close by thought he was a knob. Then again, maybe the penny did just drop and he realized that unmasking an associate who is 'niggled' by him, might reflect badly upon him.
Once again, I just feel sorry for the lawyers.
Re: !!! Anecdotal Alert !!!
I half-agree.
Yes I really really do multitask (today whilst stuck in traffic, I was googling for an address, plonking that into my Google navigation, whilst taking a call (speakerphone), which seemlessly paused the audio-book I had playing). The ability to jump around between apps, whilst the OS nicely handles everything is why I like Android.
What niggles me about Android however is the fact that it doesn't integrate in all my work stuff. Now a large chunk of this is my zealous IT dept buggering up anything simple in the name of security, forcing somewhat 'adventurous' practices upon us, but fact is that Android really isn't geared up to be corporate despite the odd tweak here and there over the versions.
To my point. MS should just position their phones as corporate Blackberry replacements. RIM have just completely lost their minds and are diving into the abyss. They're gone and once the world realizes, middle-management will want new phones. MS phones don't just offer Outlook integration, they can offer you outlook integration from the company that brought you outlook. All that cloudy/office/sharepoint/metro guff they seem hellbent on pushing, if that was just extended to a locked down handset you could give to your employee - and they might actually enjoy owning? More importantly it would get more handsets out there, which is surely MS's biggest current issue (I did play with one, it was rather more lovely than I was expecting).
Posted in Apple's UK smartphone lead shrinks
Doesn't necessarily follow Samsung
flooded operators with marketing cash - I'd have thought the operators are as happy as Samsung to push a "phone users call us up demanding we provide them with by name - that isn't an iphone".
Vodafone have something similar with their passport
EU is currently cranking the operators through a set of price caps on roaming at the moment though - last step, same price data roaming as local.
Feeling gratitude to EU rules is a somewhat novel experience.
I think most of them are relatively easy to unlock
Maybe an advantage of using a separate USB stick with a separate travel router. Sticks themselves are usually pretty easy to unlock - and a new one either locked, or with correct local freqs, is relatively easy to pick up when you arrive.
Or Asus WL330N3G
http://www.asus.com/Networks/Wireless_Routers/WL330N3G/
You need to pop a dongle into the side of it, but has a load of extra functionality. I use it for travelling, so it's useful to have a single SSID all your kit connects to, and you can just swap on PAYG wifi dongles or share a single paid account (e.g. hotel room or airport) to all your other kit.
Only downside is maybe the lack of battery, but comes with car, EU Plug, USB & RJ45 leads/chargers in one useful little bag I can sling in my big bag
Back of your watch
seems a more sensible place (if you wear a watch) - only items that's attached to my person daily and unlikely to get lost.
Yes
but most (I believe) film kit is rented. I'd have assumed the cost of renting some kit for a few weeks and then spending a few months of post-production on your laptop, is massively cheaper than hiring film cameras, buying film stock and having to rent the edit suite for the duration of post.
I disagree
I fully intend to tinker with mine and then I'm 90% sure I'll just get bored, or 'forget to pick it up for a while'
I think the long life will come from people releasing SD card images that give turn it into an appliance. E.g. XBMC is being ported across - assuming no catastrophes, this means that an RP will be the best/cheapest way to get media onto your TV. It's where I suspect mine may end up. If I'm still wanting to code, then I'll have to buy another. Then somebody else releases another great appliance to... oh I dunno allow you to plug in a £10 chinese webcam and turn it into a ethernet camera.... oh again, this is the cheapest way of getting an streaming ethernet cam, so that's one RP for every cam you want etc etc.
I can easily imagine building up a pile of them and rather than just giving up on an entire single-purpose device, just repurposing the RP.
Yup
Had a few HTCs on windows (Titan, another one, Polaris - I think..). Then got a Nexus One and now on an S2.
Switch from HTC was a combination of trying to get them to fix my Nexus (no, being without a phone for a few weeks is not customer service - and trying to arrange for a courier to be in the same place as my phone for the pickup was bizarrely problematic and took a couple of attempts). Anyway, that took away the goodwill, but I'd consider HTC for my next phone.
So, why didn't I get an HTC? Well Sense for a start - nobody likes it. Samsung messes with stock as well, but the additions are subtle and actually 'useful' - I may even go as far as to suggest I'd actively 'want' these on my phone. Also choice was simple. S2 seemed to have won every award going, I compared it against every HTC I could see (and there are way too many) and frankly couldn't see any reason to not take the Samsung.
Eventually HTC did find their differentiator, 'Beats (by Dre)'.... all their R&D, their ability to make any phone for any niche and they decide that licensing some OK garish earbuds and a graphic equalizer is they way ahead. Just seemed to utterly retarded - I mean fine, chuck them in as a sweetener to help sell "HTC, the phone that you might actually consider using the included earphones with" - but come on, that was it?
I'm still waiting for my Open Pandora
It would appear if they'd ordered one, they might have realized the issues they were going to have to face. I presume the next step will be to slowly trickle out Raspberry Pi units, then announce they've found a design flaw, realize they're not selling at enough to cover RMA/repairs and and...
Posted in So, what IS the worst film ever made?
Re: The Matrix 2
No they are not 'merely poor'
Matrix 2 was so bad that it managed to not only destroy itself, but another film that had come out years before AND a film yet to be even shown.
See also Terminator 3, Aliens 4 (for some reason I can give 3 a pass), Batman and Robin etc
Most annoying films aren't really the bad ones, but the ones that were 'nearly good'. My mind has clearly just emptied now I need to find an example, "In Time" fits the bill.
